Road trip capable?

[string33]

Have a CT3 reservation. Live in DC, but have a vacation home in the Adirondacks (way upstate NY, like almost Canada). I go there frequently. Its about 500 miles one way, 8 hrs on a good fay. Fingers crossed my CT3 can make it all the way on one charge! But if it can't, is there enough charging infrastructure to support me in remote places like the Adirondacks? I'm mostly thinking winter and summer when the battery will be really be strained in the temperatures and mountainous terrain. It is below freezing frequently, often way below. I plan to have charging at the house but I gotta get there and make day trips (through the mountains) while I'm there. Opinions on whether you would be comfortable with an EV given the circumstances. In DC I see lots Teslas. In the Adirondacks not so many. That could just be that the general mountain population is not the typical Tesla customer but in summer and winter its mostly out of town folks there for the outdoors and they mostly come from NYC but I still don't see a lot of EVs. I so can't wait for my CT3 but I want to be realistic and mostly don't want to get a lot of "I told you so" from my wife !

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[Throwcomputer]

Have a CT3 reservation. Live in DC, but have a vacation home in the Adirondacks (way upstate NY, like almost Canada). I go there frequently. Its about 500 miles one way, 8 hrs on a good fay. Fingers crossed my CT3 can make it all the way on one charge! But if it can't, is there enough charging infrastructure to support me in remote places like the Adirondacks? I'm mostly thinking winter and summer when the battery will be really be strained in the temperatures and mountainous terrain. It is below freezing frequently, often way below. I plan to have charging at the house but I gotta get there and make day trips (through the mountains) while I'm there. Opinions on whether you would be comfortable with an EV given the circumstances. In DC I see lots Teslas. In the Adirondacks not so many. That could just be that the general mountain population is not the typical Tesla customer but in summer and winter its mostly out of town folks there for the outdoors and they mostly come from NYC but I still don't see a lot of EVs. I so can't wait for my CT3 but I want to be realistic and mostly don't want to get a lot of "I told you so" from my wife !

Tesla trip planner is your friend. Try it out online.

 

[Ogre]

If the trip is 500 miles, you will almost certainly need to make at least 1 stop because "500 miles" is the rated range and actual almost always falls short by 10-20% (or more if you have a hitch rack, trailer, or load in the bed).

You can play with this site and get a good idea. https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=40258d04-3b2e-4a91-94b4-2187ff559d94

If you set it to Tesla, it limits it to Supercharges by default, but there are often other chargers available.

 

[ajdelange]

No, you won't make it up there on 1 charge but there are dozens of places to charge on the way up. I assume you'll go up 95 and then cross over to the Thruway. Newburg or Kingston should be good places as they are about half way.

Get a copy of PlugShare to see where chargers are . Get ABRP and game out the trip.

We go from DC metro to the Canadian border every summer in an X with 350 miles rated range and find it essentially no different than in an ICE vehicle (except that it's more fun to drive). You will certainly have no concerns in a TriMotor.

Definitely plan on a charger at the summer house. If you use it to keep the truck at 70% charge and try not to take it below 20% that gives you half of 500 miles i.e. 250 miles on which to run around the local area. There are SC in Plattsburg and Lake Placid and a couple of CHAdeMOS. Looks like no problem to me.

 

[stimpy]

We have a Model X that gets 325 miles on a charge and we have taken it on tips from Maryland north to New York, Mass, New Hampshire and Maine and south to North Carolina. There is plenty of charging all up and down the East Coast, so you won't have a problem.

Tesla Nav has Super Chargers listed so it's easy to see where you'll be able to charge on the route and it will plan charging stops along the way. We usually have to stop to use the restrooms before we need a charge, so I will top up then. So far we haven't needed to stop to charge when we wouldn't have already been stopping for something else.

 

[string33]

Aajdelange . I have never had an EV but trying to learn. can u explain the ranges of 70% and 20% charge. lany reason not to strive for 100%? At 20%, how long for a SC to get me to 70%?

 

[ajdelange]

Sure. You don't want to charge a lithium ion battery above 80% or discharge it below 20% if you don't have to. It's OK to do it on occasion but you don't want to do it as a matter of course. If you charge your Tesla to over 90% more than a few times in a row the car will chide you and eventually not allow it. So leaving on a trip tomorrow? Go ahead and charge to 100% (finishing, preferably, just before you leave) but don't charge it to over 90 at home.

At the low end you should avoid going below 20% when possible (your consumption graph will light up yellow if you do) but it is OK to do it on occasion.

A lot of us reason that if staying below 90% increases battery life staying below 80 should prolong it even more and find that charging to 70% every night gives us more than enough range for our daily needs. Why stress the battery beyond what we need?

Perhaps one of the biggest things you need to grasp in transitioning from ICE to BEV is that you don't fill 'er up. Think back to when you were a kid with limited funds. You didn't fill 'er up then in order to have money for beer.

There is a rule of thumb that sort of works with the current Tesla portfolio that says that below say 80% it takes 1% of an hour (0.6 min) to add 1% SoC at a Supercharger. Thus 20% to 70% will take you about half an hour.

 

[string33]

staying at 70% while staying around home makes perfect sense. if leaving on a trip and I want to get to 100% .. I charge to 90% at home and then take to a SC for the last 10%?

 

[tmeyer3]

I really don't think you'll have a problem in TRI motor CT, and all the answers here are great! One thing I'd do, that I don't think has been mentioned yet, is bring a generator on your first trip as a security blanket. I did this when I took a trip across the Sierra Nevadas in my model 3, but never had to use it.
If you make the trip regularly, it'll be a lot less scary once you get over the range anxiety. I think everyone has it with their first EV. But you get over it, especially with Tesla's infrastructure.

 

[DarinCT]

staying at 70% while staying around home makes perfect sense. if leaving on a trip and I want to get to 100% .. I charge to 90% at home and then take to a SC for the last 10%?

@string33 If you use ABRB ( the A Better Routeplanner ) website, make sure you go into settings and choose the appropriate vehicle. It does have CT but calls it "alpha" because the range isn't official.

And yes, you'll be more than fine with a top-up here or there or a stop.

 

[DarinCT]

Here's a fun related read where 11 different EVs go on a 1000 mile loop.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36877585/ev-1000-11-electric-cars-long-distance-race/

 

[ajdelange]

staying at 70% while staying around home makes perfect sense. if leaving on a trip and I want to get to 100% .. I charge to 90% at home and then take to a SC for the last 10%?

No. If you really need 100% for a trip you might as well add it all at home. But as others have suggested use ABRP to suggest a charging program for the trip. It will most likely have you charge to 70% at home. drive down to 30% or so and have you recharge to 70% at that point. There are settings within ABRP where you specify how much charge you will depart with, how much is the minimum you want on board upon arrival at chargers and destination and how much is the maximum charge you want to leave a charger with. Your inputs obviously make a big difference in what it suggests for you.

 

[rr6013]

Have a CT3 reservation. Live in DC, but have a vacation home in the Adirondacks (way upstate NY, like almost Canada). I go there frequently. Its about 500 miles one way, 8 hrs on a good fay. Fingers crossed my CT3 can make it all the way on one charge! But if it can't, is there enough charging infrastructure to support me in remote places like the Adirondacks? I'm mostly thinking winter and summer when the battery will be really be strained in the temperatures and mountainous terrain. It is below freezing frequently, often way below. I plan to have charging at the house but I gotta get there and make day trips (through the mountains) while I'm there. Opinions on whether you would be comfortable with an EV given the circumstances. In DC I see lots Teslas. In the Adirondacks not so many. That could just be that the general mountain population is not the typical Tesla customer but in summer and winter its mostly out of town folks there for the outdoors and they mostly come from NYC but I still don't see a lot of EVs. I so can't wait for my CT3 but I want to be realistic and mostly don't want to get a lot of "I told you so" from my wife !

You have the 1000mi. round trip (RT) race. Tesla just finished 1,2,3 in the Car & Driver 1000 race. Their finish times 16, 18, 18 hrs.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36877585/ev-1000-11-electric-cars-long-distance-race/

To a soul all drivers were asked if they’d do the trip again? Response, including Tesla winners, if they were to do the trip again, they would do one thing differently: drive a gas car.

RANGE is KING

 

[Crissa]

staying at 70% while staying around home makes perfect sense. if leaving on a trip and I want to get to 100% .. I charge to 90% at home and then take to a SC for the last 10%?

You can do that, but the battery doesn't like it. Charging speed is faster the lower your charge state.
https://support.fastned.nl/hc/en-gb/articles/360012178313-Charging-with-a-Tesla-Model-3

You're going on a road trip. You tell your Tesla you're leaving at 8am, and leave it plugged in. The car then plans ahead to be at 100% at 8am (and the cabin pre heated or cooled).

You take your first leg of your trip. You want to get as low as you can, and Tesla Nav will tell you where that is. You can also use Plugshare and A Better Route Planner to get off the beaten path.

By your first stop, you've put on two to four hours of driving and two hundred miles.

You charge up only enough to get to your next stop. Stay below 80z, and heck, stay below 60% if you want speed.

Plan to stay places with Level 2 charges if you have a driving day the next day, so the car is full up before you go. Try to plug in at at least Level 1 and you will have a safety margin in case a charger fails out (but that's pretty much never for Tesla)

Rinse and repeat.

-Crissa

 

[firsttruck]

staying at 70% while staying around home makes perfect sense. if leaving on a trip and I want to get to 100% .. I charge to 90% at home and then take to a SC for the last 10%?

Normally, when leaving home on a long trip you should try to leave home with 100% SoC (state of charge) if possible.

If your trip starts from home, the night before the the trip or the morning before the trip, while at home charge to 100% SoC (state of charge) while at home. You normally should not need to do a top up at a Tesla SC immediately.

If not using route planner, the typical pattern is roughly:
start your trip with 100%, make the first stop at Tesla SC when car charge drops to 15-20% and then charge back to 70-85%. Stop again when ever charge drops to 15-20% SoC and then charge back to 70-85%.

If you do use a route planner, it will be a similar pattern but each stop will be optimized for conditions. Stop times and SoC might vary for each stop.

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